Chapter 22.

BATTLEFIELD.

'SO WHAT'S DIRECTLY behind this door?'

'Let me draw you a diagram,' Kevin said in answer to Purna's question. 'Rafa, if I could borrow your knife for a moment?'

Eyeing Purna, Sam and the rest of the group with the sullen resentment of a small boy who fears he is about to have his favourite toy taken away from him, Rafa pulled the knife from his belt and passed it across the table to Kevin.

'Thank you,' Kevin said, and turned briefly to beam at Purna. Waving the knife casually he said, 'I promise I won't try anything silly with this. Just in case you were wondering.'

'I wasn't,' Purna replied.

Smirking as if at some private joke, Kevin turned back to the table and began to scratch a pattern into its surface with the knife's tip. Working patiently and laboriously he said, 'It's ironic, isn't it, that because pens and pencils are regarded as dangerous weapons in our sweaty little hands, I have to resort to using a knife as a writing implement. What a crazy world we live in.'

When he was finished he passed the knife back to Rafa and stood back, revealing his handiwork with a flourish. Purna glanced suspiciously at the seated men before stepping forward. What Kevin had drawn was a series of five circles two at the top and two at the bottom, with a smaller one in the middle linked by a series of spokes she assumed were corridors. A longer spoke leading away from the central circle led to a sixth circle on the right.

'If I may explain?' said Kevin, holding up his hands to show he had nothing in them.

'Go ahead,' said Purna.

'Although it doesn't look it from the outside,' Kevin said, 'the interior of the prison is built "in the round", by which I mean the cell areas and the dayroom areas are circular. Apparently this design functions more efficiently as an incarcerating facility. There are no shadowy corners, which means that sight lines are clear and there's a better view of all that goes on. Now, we're currently in this area,' he pointed at the top left-hand circle, 'though as you can see this particular room isn't round, because it's simply one element of the space a square within a circle, so to speak.' He looked up and smiled. 'Still with me so far?'

'Go on,' muttered Purna.

'We need to get to Sector Seven, which is here.' His finger moved across to the larger circle on the right. 'This is the tower you can see from Banoi, and it's connected to the rest of the facility primarily by this long corridor here. However, although this is the most direct route, it will also be the most populated. What I propose, therefore, is that we move diagonally across the central Panopticon here, and down to the door leading into the high-security section through here.' He pointed at the lower right-hand circle. 'There is access through a corridor here into the lower left quadrant of the tower. Where we're aiming for is here.' He indicated a cross at the end of the long corridor, which extended almost halfway into the right-hand circle depicting the tower.

'What's that?' asked Purna.

'A lift,' said Kevin. 'It will take us up into the operating heart of the facility. And that's where we need to be. That's Sector Seven.'

Purna studied the diagram carefully. 'Explain the layout of these circular areas to me,' she said.

'They're very simple,' said Kevin. 'Cells on four levels around the outside and a large central area in the middle where inmates congregate during the day. Right in the middle of each central area, like the hub of a wheel, is a security tower, maybe ten metres high. The tower has a door at the bottom, opening on to steps which lead up to a panoramic viewing area.'

'Are there individual windows?' Purna asked.

Kevin nodded and narrowed his eyes, visualizing it. 'Eight in all, I think.'

'And can they be opened?'

'I don't know. I guess.' He smirked again. 'I've never been up there. I'm an observee not an observer.'

'I'm guessing these areas will be crawling with the infected?' said Logan.

Kevin nodded almost gleefully. 'Oh, absolutely swarming with them.'

'What do you think our chances are of getting through?' asked Xian Mei.

'Honestly? I'd say the chances of us all making it through are slim. We'd have to run very fast and shoot very accurately. And even then some of us would probably be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.'

'Yet you're still prepared to come with us,' said Purna suspiciously.

Kevin looked at her without blinking. 'Yes.'

'Why?'

''Cos he crazy,' muttered the black man.

Kevin looked pained. 'Thank you, Clarence, for that pithy character assassination.' He turned the full force of his gaze on Purna. 'Because I honestly think you're our only chance of survival, minimal though that may be. And because I'd rather go down fighting than sit here and rot.'

Purna stared at him and Kevin stared back. It was as if they were trying to see into each other's souls. Finally she said, 'I'm not sure I believe you.'

'But you'll still allow me to tag along?'

She shrugged. 'If you really want to. But you're not getting a gun.'

He seemed to accept her pronouncement with equanimity. 'In that case, may I ask one small favour?'

'Depends what it is.'

'If any of you see me getting into ... difficulties with my fellow inmates out there, please put me out of my misery. Being eaten alive by those things, or even worse, turning into one of them ' He shuddered. 'Well, it would be so undignified.'

'If those things get you,' said Sam heavily, 'it will be my personal pleasure to shoot you in the head.'

Kevin placed a hand on his chest. 'Your kindness overwhelms me.'

Purna, meanwhile, had crossed to another table and was swinging her backpack from her shoulders. Placing it in front of her, she said, 'I've got something in here which may even up the odds a little ...'

Three minutes later they were good to go. After discussing and agreeing on their strategy, Purna had tried calling White again without success. Frustrated by her inability to get through, she had crossed to the nearest wall-mounted CCTV camera, stared up into it and carefully outlined the route they were planning to take.

'I hope you can see and hear me,' she said, 'because if you can't, we're probably dead, which means your wife is too.'

It was as she was walking back across the room that they all heard the doors on the far side unlock with a series of chunks. Sam, Logan, Yerema and Jin were already kneeling by the door in readiness, and Xian Mei was standing behind them, her rifle trained on the door, pointing over their heads. Kevin was waiting with his hand on the handle and looked round almost casually as Purna approached.

'I presume you heard that?'

Purna nodded. 'Everyone ready?'

They all muttered in affirmation.

'OK,' she said, and jerked her head at Kevin.

He pushed down the handle and rammed his shoulder against the heavy metal door, leaning against it with all his wiry strength. Even so, it opened agonizingly slowly, the widening gap giving them a gradually expanding glimpse into a hellish world.

The circular cathedral-like room was packed with zombies. They milled like sheep, snarling and groaning, blundering into one another as they each moved in their own pointlessly meandering fashion. Occasionally one would stumble and fall, sometimes knocking down others, but there were no recriminations, no hostility. Indeed, the infected seemed barely aware of each other, barely even operational. It was only ever food, or the prospect of food, that coaxed any sort of reaction from them.

It wasn't, therefore, the opening door that drew the creatures' attention, but the glimpse or smell of living meat beyond it. As Sam crouched in front of the door, he became aware of bodies turning clumsily around, heads snapping in his direction. He could almost see the creatures' primitive thought processes sparking into life, their blotchy discoloured faces twisting into the only expressions they were capable of rage and hunger. As the infected moved en masse towards them, like water flowing towards a crack in a dam wall, Xian Mei started firing, carefully and precisely eradicating the closest and most immediate threats.

'Now!' shouted Purna, whereupon she, Sam, Logan, Jin and Yerema pulled the pins from the grenades they were clutching in their hands and hurled them, in five different directions, into the room beyond. Instantly Sam snatched up the second grenade from the floor by his feet and, peripherally aware that the others were doing the same, pulled the pin from it and hurled that one too.

As soon as all ten grenades had been thrown, he jumped up and helped Kevin wrestle the door closed, Xian Mei still firing through the gradually narrowing gap. By this time mottled grey-blue hands, the fingernails black and splintered, were curling round the edge of the door, trying to haul it open again or simply swipe at the tasty morsels on the other side. As Sam and Kevin struggled with the door, Yerema, Jin and Logan battered at the grasping fingers as best they could with the butts of their guns. Purna joined Xian Mei in firing through the gap, her face as calm and concentrated as ever, despite the proximity of the ravening dead.

Then the first of the grenades went off, and was followed in quick succession by several others. Kevin, Sam and the girls were thrown back as the blast slammed the door shut in a super-heated gust of air. They were picking themselves up, a little dazed, when Jin cried out in disgust. As the door had banged shut, a zombie hand had been severed at the wrist and was now lying on the floor, convulsively opening and closing like a beetle on its back. For a few seconds they all remained motionless, watching the thing's death-throes. Despite everything they had been through, everything they had seen, the frantically wriggling fingers held a particular revulsion. At last the hand stopped moving, whereupon Purna stepped decisively forward and kicked it across the room, where it came to rest under a table like a dead crab.

All the time they had been watching the hand, the grenades in the other room had been going off. Accompanying the first wave of blasts had been the tinkle of breaking glass and numerous wet thuds against the closed doors. The echoes were still thrumming in their ears when the second wave kicked in, five enormous explosions, one after the other. The room shook, and a large crack appeared in the thick stone wall from floor to ceiling. Then there was silence.

It was the prisoners, still sitting around the table fifteen metres away, who reacted first. They began to whoop and laugh; a couple of them high-fived each other.

Irritably Purna raised a hand for silence, pressing her ear against the door. After a few seconds, she said, 'Still some movement, but I think we should go now, while those that haven't been blown to bits are still recovering.'

Though Sam's ears were still throbbing, he nodded and looked around. 'Everyone ready?'

There were further nods and mutters of confirmation.

'Come on,' said Purna.

She opened the door with a shove, took one look around and started running. Sam, a step behind her, did the same, feeling not unlike a soldier crossing a battlefield. The circular room Panopticon, Kevin had called it was a wreck, the floor scattered with twisted metal and shattered glass. Even more of a wreck were its occupants, the majority blown to pieces. There were body parts everywhere, and the floor was so awash with blood that it resembled a red lake choked with flesh and debris.

Despite this, some of the infected were still active. A good proportion of these, however, were so badly injured they could do little more than drag themselves around on shattered limbs. One man, his arms nothing but stumps from which spikes of splintered bone stuck out like vestigial wings, ran at Sam, gnashing his teeth. Sam swivelled and shot him in the head, barely breaking his stride. He jumped over the grasping hand of a man whose innards were oozing from a gaping hole in his midriff. Nearby a head, attached to little more than a spinal column and half a torso, was growling and grinding its teeth.

It had earlier been agreed that if a good proportion of the infected survived the blast, the seven of them would make for the observation tower in the centre of the room and re-enact 'Operation Fish in a Barrel', picking off the zombies from above. However the grenades two dozen of which had been liberated, along with their guns, from the police armoury on Banoi had done considerably more damage than Sam suspected even Purna had hoped. As a result of this the Australian girl turned briefly and shouted, 'Keep going!' She gestured towards the door diagonally across from the one through which they had entered.

As soon as she reached the door, just a little ahead of the others, she tried the handle. Satisfied the door would open, she yelled, 'Xian Mei, cover us! The rest of you grenades!'

None of them needed any further explanation. As Xian Mei turned and began firing at the few zombies still able-bodied enough to lurch towards them (a quick glance confirmed to Sam that none of the remaining creatures were actually running), he, Logan, Jin and Yerema were fumbling in their pockets. Sam helped Purna shove the door open, and then as the infected on the other side began to register their presence, the five of them pulled the pins on their second batch of grenades and hurled them into what Kevin had earlier told them was the high-security wing. Purna began firing at the creatures closest to the door while Sam and the others grabbed their remaining grenades and repeated the process. Then Purna and Sam swapped places, Sam keeping the infected back while Purna threw her last grenade.

Once again it was the first, almost simultaneous round of blasts that slammed the door closed. This time Sam and the others were already moving back in readiness, but that didn't prevent them from being liberally spattered with zombie blood when one of the infected, who had been squeezing himself through the narrow gap between door and frame, was all but sliced in half lengthways when the first grenade went off. Choking and spluttering, Sam was at least secretly gratified to see that Kevin too had had a liberal dousing. The skinny guy was looking down at his gore-streaked overalls with the appalled expression of a kid at a party whose best friend had just vomited all over his favourite T-shirt. Still wiping the stinking, dripping fluid from his face, Sam said, 'Welcome to the club, buddy.'

For a split-second, which coincided with the second batch of grenades going off in the next room, Kevin looked at him with an expression of pure venom. And then his face abruptly and creepily slipped back into its familiar, slightly secretive smile, and he said, 'I'll look forward to receiving my membership badge.'

With Xian Mei and Logan still picking off zombies behind them, Purna and Sam reopened the door to check what damage the second batch of grenades had wrought. As before the results were both impressive and appalling. Though some of the infected had survived, most had been torn to pieces, and the room now looked like the aftermath of a train wreck. To add to this impression the central observation tower had collapsed, which meant that as well as severed limbs and mangled bodies, the floor was strewn with an obstacle course of tangled metal and broken glass.

Purna began to cross the room, picking her way through and over the wreckage, heading for the door Kevin had indicated on his diagram, which stood between two rows of cells on the far wall. As she advanced she gunned down approaching zombies with ruthless efficiency, and Sam, a few steps behind her, did the same. Just behind Sam came Jin and Yerema, firing their pistols when they needed to, and just behind them, keeping his head low, was Kevin.

At the back of the group Logan and Xian Mei wrestled the door closed to shut out the straggle of approaching zombies left in the previous room. Turning, they found themselves cut off from the rest of the group, as at least two dozen of the infected closed in from all sides. Some of the creatures had been injured in the blast, but most were still able-bodied enough to remain dangerous.

'Er ... guys,' Logan shouted as he and Xian Mei, standing back to back, began firing at the fastest of the approaching zombies. Suddenly something dropped from above, and although it only caught them a glancing blow, it was enough to knock Xian Mei off her feet and send her gun flying out of her hand. Logan barely had time to register that what had hit them was one of the infected, which had apparently been so desperate to attack that it had taken the most direct route from an upper balcony, before the rest of the zombies converged on them.

'Guys!' he yelled again, firing desperately into the mass of clawing hands and viciously snarling faces. Somewhere close to him he heard Xian Mei screaming in terror and pain, and then, wrenched and buffeted from all sides, he went down. He began to struggle frantically, punching and kicking, as faces lunged in at him. He felt a sharp pain in his leg, and then another in his upper arm.

No! he thought. I won't fucking die like this!

Then there were gunshots, running feet, a confusion of noise, and suddenly he was showered with blood and brains as the hideous, rage-filled faces above him were blasted apart one by one. A couple of seconds later those faces were replaced by one he recognized. It was Sam, his wide eyes alive with anxiety and concern.

'Hey, man, you OK?' he asked.

'Apart from nearly becoming a Happy Meal, I'm great,' replied Logan. He tried to rise and felt pain shoot through his left arm and right leg. 'Ow! Fuck! That hurts!'

'You're bitten, man,' said Sam. 'Can you stand?'

Logan gritted his teeth. 'Yes, I can stand. If I can't I'm fucking dead, right?'

With Sam's and surprisingly Kevin's help, Logan rose to his feet. Vaguely, through the swimming pain in his head, he was still aware of gunshots being fired, of zombies dropping like cattle in an abattoir.

'How's Xian Mei?' he gasped.

'She'll be fine. Come on.'

'Where we going?'

'No questions. Just come on.'

Staggering, limping, supported on one side by Kevin and on the other by Sam, who was firing from the hip, blowing advancing zombies aside as they went, they made it to the door at the far side of the room.

When they were through, Sam quickly but gently lowered Logan to the ground. Logan sat with his back against the wall, wondering where his gun had gone, willing his head to stop spinning. Everything was still a blur, however, a mush of noise and activity. He was aware of people running towards him, of more shots being fired, and then what sounded like whimpers of pain. He tried to focus, to concentrate, but the sounds ran together, became distorted, and he felt as if he was sinking into a deep well. He tried to claw his way back towards the light, but thick velvety blackness swamped him, rolling over him in waves. Finally, unable to find the strength to fight it any longer, he passed out ...

... and woke what seemed like seconds later, gasping in shock. 'How you doing?' asked a voice.

Sam. It was Sam. Logan blinked at him.

'Where am I?'

'In prison,' Sam said, and with that it all came flooding back.

Logan rubbed a hand over his face and groaned. 'Figures. My mom always said I'd end up in jail. How's Xian Mei?'

'Worse than you,' said Sam, 'but she'll be OK.'

'What'd they do to her?'

'They tore a lot of the skin off her arm. Purna bandaged her up pretty good. Here.'

Sam offered Logan a bottle of water. He took it gratefully, chugging it down. The water helped revive him and he looked around. They were in a corridor. It was featureless, kind of depressing, but quiet. Blessedly quiet.

Everyone was sitting around, taking a breather, getting over what had happened. They looked like the remains of an army after a very tough battle exhausted, blood-stained, shell-shocked. Xian Mei, her left arm heavily bandaged from fingertips to shoulder like the Bride of Frankenstein, had dark rings around her eyes and an expression so pasty her lips looked bloodless.

'Hey,' Logan said to her, and she rewarded him with a weary smile.