'In the sick bay, waiting for news that you've arrived with the vaccine. As soon as your friends wake up, I'll give him a call, whereupon he will radio for a helicopter to take us all far, far away from here.'

'And what happens then?' said Purna. 'What happens to us?'

Charon patted his pocket. 'You're my insurance,' he said, 'in case the vaccine doesn't work.'

Insurance. Purna was growing to hate that word. The men in the police station had kept Jin as 'insurance'. 'And if it does work?' she said.

'You'll still be assets,' Charon replied. 'Once news of the virus gets out, I'm sure there will be plenty of factions desperate for immunity.'

'So what you saying?' said Sam. 'That you'll sell us like cattle to the highest bidder?'

'Maybe. But don't worry, I'll see that you go to a good home.'

'I thought you worked for the Organization?'

'That doesn't mean there isn't room for a little free enterprise.'

Purna gave him a disgusted look. 'You're nothing but a chancer, are you, Kevin or Charon or whatever your name is?'

'I prefer to think of myself as an entrepreneur,' Charon said.

'Dealing in human lives?' asked Purna.

'Why not?' Charon replied. 'Is there a product more precious?'

Before anyone could answer, there was a groan and Yerema leaned back in her seat, screwing up her eyes in an attempt to open them.

'Ah, and here's Patient Zero,' he said, 'the most precious asset of all.'

Suddenly, briskly, he strode across to the line of chairs on which they sat and shook first Logan and then Jin roughly by the shoulder.

'Wake up,' he barked. 'It's time to go.'

Chapter 24.

uBER ZOMBIE

'YOU MUST BE the people who brought the vaccine.'

Strong-jawed and broad-shouldered, Colonel Ryder White looked every inch the capable and efficient army man. Even standing beneath the blazing sun, and despite his straitened circumstances, his green army fatigues were immaculate every button fastened, trousers tucked neatly into the tops of his gleaming, tightly-laced army boots, red beret folded precisely beneath the epaulette on his left shoulder.

His wife's demeanour, however, could not have provided more of a contrast. Strapped to a gurney with thick leather constraints, the clearly once slim and pretty blonde woman in the beautifully-tailored white suit was a snarling spitting harridan. Her eyes had already taken on the familiar milky glaze of the terminally infected and her skin was grey and discoloured. Even her suit looked grubby and dishevelled, as if she had been scrabbling around in the dirt, or as if the corruption of her body was seeping through her clothes.

One look was enough for Sam to tell there was no way back for her. If White believed that some miracle vaccine was going to restore his wife to life and health, then he was sorely deluded.

'That's us,' said Logan in response to White's question.

'Why are you handcuffed?'

'You better ask him,' said Sam, jerking his head towards Charon, who was at the rear of the group, herding them across the wide expanse of the tower roof with the aid of what had previously been Yerema's handgun.

'Despite the successful conclusion to what you no doubt perceive as a heroic mission, Colonel, these people are ruthless mercenaries and should be treated with the utmost caution,' Charon said.

Purna barked a laugh. 'That's a prime example of the pot calling the kettle black if I ever heard one.'

Despite asking the question, White seemed uninterested in either Charon's explanation or Purna's response. Looking at Charon with barely concealed desperation, he demanded, 'Where is the vaccine now?'

Charon patted the pocket of his overalls. 'Don't worry, Colonel. I have it here, safe and sound.'

'Show it to me.'

'I don't think that's really nece-'

'Show it to me,' the Colonel insisted, employing what Sam guessed was his parade-ground bark, a tone that invited no argument. 'I need to know it exists, that there's still a chance ...'

His voice choked off, and Sam realized how raw the Colonel's emotions were, how hard he was fighting to hold himself together. Walking forward a few paces, Charon sighed and reached into his pocket, producing the stoppered vial of yellowish liquid.

'There you are,' he said, as if speaking to a spoiled child. 'Happy now?'

White produced a Beretta M9 from his holster and pointed it at Charon. 'Hand it over.'

Sam glanced at Charon, who was now standing to his right. The Organization agent rolled his eyes. 'Oh, come on, Colonel, put that away. You're embarrassing yourself.'

'Give it to me.'

'Why?' asked Charon. 'So you can feed it to your wife like medicine? Don't be ridiculous. It has to be fully tested and an antidote manufactured. That's going to take time.'

'We don't have time,' White insisted, and he seemed twitchy now, agitated. Beads of sweat stood out on his broad forehead. 'My wife's sick, can't you see that?'

'Your wife's dead, Colonel,' Purna piped up. She jerked her head towards Charon. 'And he killed her.'

'Dead?' White shook his head angrily. 'No ... no, she's very ill. But she's going to be fine.'

Charon laughed. 'Of course she is, Colonel. Don't listen to this woman. She's just trying to drive a wedge between us.'

'It's true, Colonel,' Purna called across the gap between them. 'This man Charon or Kevin or whatever he calls himself introduced the virus into the hospital, knowing that your wife would contract it. He did it to delay your order to destroy the island if the infection achieved pandemic proportions which, of course, it quickly did.'

Charon laughed even harder. 'I've never heard such nonsense.'

'It's all true,' Logan called. 'He told us so himself. We all heard it, right everyone?'

They all nodded.

'He's been stringing you along, Colonel,' Sam shouted. 'Every step of the way. He and the people he works for want to use the virus as a weapon. They only wanted a vaccine so they could control it.'

White gaped at them, clearly not sure what to believe. Apparently unruffled, Charon said, 'Of course they're going to say that, Colonel. But we both know it's not true, don't we? It's just a pathetic attempt to divide and conquer. But it's not going to work, is it? We're both stronger, more intelligent than that.'

'Look at your wife, Colonel,' Purna shouted. 'Look at what Charon did to her.'

White looked down at his wife, bemused and indecisive, his capable and efficient demeanour of a few minutes before having crumbled completely. 'You did this?' he asked.

'Of course not,' snapped Charon, exasperated. 'They're just-'

And that was when Sam hit him.

Taking advantage of Charon's momentary distraction, Sam threw himself sideways, his hands still cuffed in front of him. His 190 pounds of almost solid muscle smashed into the skinnier man's midriff and knocked him off his feet. Both men landed in a heap, Charon on his back, Sam crashing down on the ground next to him and taking the full impact on his shoulder. Although Charon kept a grip on his gun, the vial of vaccine flew from his hand and hit the ground about five metres away. Despite being made of glass, it didn't break, but instead rolled along the tower's flat concrete roof. Furiously Charon kicked out at Sam, then brought his gun hand round and smashed him in the side of the head. Sam, who had been struggling to rise, groaned and slumped back down, dazed. Charon jumped to his feet, teeth bared in a feral snarl.

While Sam and Charon had been scrabbling on the ground, Jin, acting largely on impulse, had broken away from the captive group and sprinted towards the rolling vial. Dropping to her knees, she leaned forward and awkwardly snatched it up in one of her cuffed hands, scrambled back to her feet and ran towards the Colonel and his wife. She had a vague notion that the vaccine would be better off in White's hands than in Charon's, that under the army's jurisdiction it would be put to good use, rather than simply being sold, along with the virus itself, to the highest bidder. She had covered around two-thirds of the distance, and was no more than ten metres away from the still uncertain-looking Colonel, when Charon shot her.

There was no warning. The skinny man merely raised his gun and fired. There were cries of horror from the captive group as blood erupted from the ragged wound that appeared in Jin's back. Arms outstretched, she was thrown forward, as if hit with a sledgehammer, and crashed down on to her face. Her body convulsed for a moment and then relaxed as the life went out of her.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Xian Mei's face was etched with shock, her mouth open in disbelief. Purna's eyes burned with anger. Logan spun round to face Charon, his face blazing red.

'What the fuck did you do that for?' he yelled. 'You killed her! You fucking killed her, you murdering fuck!'

With vicious intent, Charon swung the gun round, aiming it at Logan's face. 'I'll shoot you too if you don't shut your mouth.'

Still somewhat dazed, Sam struggled up into a sitting position and spat out a mouthful of blood. Looking numbly at Jin's motionless body, he said in a low voice, 'First chance I get, I swear I'm gonna fucking kill you.'

'Is that so?' sneered Charon. 'In that case, I'd better make sure you don't get that chance, hadn't I?' Then he swung away from Sam and pointed his gun at a fresh target. 'Get back, Colonel,' he warned.

While everyone had been reacting to Jin's death, White had moved forward and plucked the vial from the girl's lifeless hand. He held it up in front of him now, looking at it with something like wonder. Ignoring Charon's warning, he turned and walked back to his wife.

'Colonel, I mean it!' Charon snapped.

Almost casually White glanced round, raised his gun and fired. The bullet went high, but they all threw themselves to the ground, Charon included. By the time they lifted their heads, White had re-holstered his gun and was pulling the stopper from the vial.

'Colonel, don't!' Charon cried, an edge of panic in his voice. With his weapon held high he began to run across the thirty metres of open space between them.

White was tipping the contents of the vial towards his wife's mouth when Charon fired. Fearful that shooting White would cause him to drop the vial and spill its contents, Charon aimed his bullet deliberately over the Colonel's head. He hoped the threat alone would be enough to make him freeze, perhaps even to bring him to his senses.

'The next bullet won't miss!' Charon promised, his voice raw. 'Give me back the vial now or I'll kill you and your wife.'

But White wasn't listening. Driven by an obsessive desire to save the woman he loved, the Colonel was now lost in his own world, deaf both to threats and reason. Charon could only watch, appalled, as White poured the entire contents of the vial into his wife's snarling snapping mouth.

'No!' Charon roared. 'What have you done?'

Enraged, he raised his gun and squeezed the trigger, again and again and again.

White twitched and bucked, blood spurting from him as bullets ripped into his body. He crashed against his wife's gurney and slid to the floor. Coldly Charon swung the gun round, aimed it at the Colonel's wife and pulled the trigger. It clicked empty. Swearing, Charon rooted for extra ammunition in the pocket of his overalls.

Reduced for the moment to mere spectators, Purna, Sam and the others watched from thirty metres away. Sam felt a savage satisfaction in seeing Charon's carefully laid plans going up in smoke, but he couldn't help wondering how the loss of the vaccine would affect not only his and his friends' long-term prospects, but also those of the rest of the world, should the virus spread beyond the island.

All at once Logan called, 'Hey, check out Mrs White.'

'What's happening to her?' muttered Yerema.

'Must be the vaccine,' said Sam.

Still strapped to the gurney, the Colonel's wife was shaking violently, as if she was having some kind of seizure. The gurney itself was rattling, in danger of tipping over. And then Mrs White began to change. Her body seemed to swell, to bulk out with strange mis-shapen growths. They erupted all over her, her clothes ripping as her limbs and torso expanded. It was almost like watching a violent chemical reaction, thought Sam, or maybe an accelerated film of chronic steroid abuse. The infected woman screeched in either rage or agony as her face also began to dilate and distort. Within seconds she had enlarged to twice, maybe three times her normal size, and had become so grossly malformed that she was barely recognizable as human.

'Shit,' said Logan in awe as the hideous creature thrashed from side to side, snapping the gurney's thick leather constraints like cotton thread. 'She's become a fucking uber zombie.'

What once had been the Colonel's wife bellowed again and clambered to its feet, pulverizing the gurney into twisted metal and sweeping it aside with a single blow from its massive arm.

Charon, meanwhile, had succeeded in reloading his gun and was backing away in disbelief, looking up at the creature as it rose to its full height. It stood, swaying for a moment, like a gnarled, ancient tree made not of bark and sap, but of compacted, hideously swollen lumps of dead flesh.

Then it charged.

It thundered towards Charon like a bull elephant, its terrible ratcheting cry a jagged blade of sound that ripped the air apart. Sam had to hand it to the skinny guy if nothing else, the man had balls. Most people would have turned and run, but Charon stood his ground, levelled his gun and began to fire. Arm ramrod-straight, he pumped bullet after bullet into the creature's head or at least, into the grotesquely swollen protuberance on its shoulders that now passed for a head. Each shot ripped away dough-like chunks of flesh, thick blackish fluid gushing from the gaping wounds. The first few bullets barely slowed the creature down, but then the barrage began to take its toll. Punctured in a dozen or more places, the creature started to stagger and sway, leaving a black trail like engine oil behind it. Still Charon backed away before its advance; still he fired his gun, reloading quickly when he needed to. Eventually he could back away no more. He came to a halt a metre from the edge of the tower roof. The creature was stumbling now, wheezing as it came. Charon stopped firing his gun and slowly raised his arms, like a high diver preparing for a plunge into the water below.

'Come on,' he shouted. And then he screamed at it: 'Come on!'

As if reacting to the taunt, the creature broke into a renewed run, putting the last of its energy into a final attack. Charon waited until it was no more than a couple of metres away from him, then he hurled himself to one side. With a final screech the creature, unable to halt its forward momentum, plunged over the edge of the tower and plummeted to the ground far below. There was a moment of silence followed by a sizzling bang, like a massive electrical circuit shorting out.

Before anyone could react, there came the faint drone of an engine from somewhere overhead. Sam looked up and saw a black speck in the sky, growing steadily larger. Even though Charon had been occupied by the creature for the past couple of minutes, the rest of them had simply stood and watched. If they had been anywhere else they might have used the distraction to try to escape, but up here on the roof there had been nowhere to escape to. Now Charon was walking back towards them almost casually, his gun trained on them.

'Stand well back,' he shouted. 'Give him room to land.'

Sam didn't know much about helicopters, but he could see this was a pretty big one. It was black and fat-bodied like a gigantic well-fed fly. As it descended towards them the downdraught from its whickering rotors caused their clothes to flap and the girls' hair to whip and thrash around their faces. It landed gracefully, its wheels barely kissing the concrete before it came to rest. Charon gestured again with the gun.

'Get in,' he yelled.

'Where are we going?' Purna's voice was almost lost in the noise.

He smiled a crooked smile. 'Magical mystery tour.'

Still handcuffed, the five of them, with Charon bringing up the rear, trooped towards the chopper. The helmeted, black-goggled pilot barely glanced at them as they climbed aboard. Inside they sat on two rows of three seats, Logan and Xian Mei at the back, Sam, Purna and Yerema at the front. Charon sat up front, next to the pilot, though he swivelled in his seat so he could keep his gun trained on them. Nodding to the pilot, he said mockingly, 'Ladies and gentlemen, we are now leaving paradise.'

With a deafening roar of engines, the helicopter lifted away from the roof of the tower. Sam's stomach lurched as it banked slightly, swooping to one side. Looking out of a window, he saw the creature that had once been Dana White impaled on the electric fence. She was burning, the bulbous mass of her head hanging down, her vast arms spread as if crucified. As they headed up towards the clouds, Sam saw the island of Banoi receding below him. Turning away, he looked into the cold staring eyes of Charon, and wondered what the future would bring.

About the Author.