Chapter 14: SINAMOI [2]
Sam sighed. 'That song's gonna haunt me the rest of my life.'
'Don't take it to heart,' said Logan. 'If the zombie apocalypse is really going down, then the rest of your life will likely be over before you know it.'
'Can't quite put my finger on why,' said Sam, 'but that thought don't give me a whole lotta comfort.'
They crept down the next two flights in silence. They had almost reached the fire door that would have led them out onto floor six when Logan halted. 'Shit.'
'What is it?' said Purna, her body tensing.
'Aw, man,' said Logan.
'What is it?'
'I left my pills in my room.'
'Your what?'
'My pills. My drugs. I forgot all about them, what with being attacked and all.' He considered a moment. 'Maybe I should go back.'
'What? You crazy?' said Sam.
Logan looked stubborn. 'I need my pills.'
'What do you need them for? You got some kind of condition?'
'Yes, I've got a condition,' snapped Logan. 'It's called needing my fucking pills!'
Purna stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. 'We'll get you some more pills,' she said reasonably.
'Oh, you really think it'll be that fucking easy?'
'To get painkillers and antidepressants? Maybe.'
He looked astonished. 'How did you—'
'I'm good at reading people,' she said crisply. 'Now shall we go?'
The words were barely out of her mouth when the door to floor six flew open, and a woman in a white, blood-spattered nightgown appeared. Purna, Sam, and Logan reacted instinctively, each of them raising their weapons and dropping into a defensive stance. Seeing them, the woman jerked to a halt, her face etched with terror and shock.
Then, with a screech, something flew at the woman from behind, hitting her back with such force that she slipped on the blood pooling beneath her bare feet and went down in a graceless flurry of limbs. At first, Sam thought the thing that had attacked her was some kind of monkey.
Weirdly it reminded him of the Tasmanian Devil in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. That fucker had moved in a blur, like a living tornado.
This thing was similarly ferocious, tearing at the woman's back and neck with claws and teeth as she lay half in, half out of the open doorway.
The woman was screeching horribly; she sounded more like a tortured animal than a human being.
The creature was tearing chunks of flesh off her, just stripping them from her and stuffing them into its mouth. There was blood everywhere, spraying and flying in all directions. It was only when Purna stepped forward that the creature raised its head to look at them, and Sam was shocked to see, through its thick mask of blood, that it was a little girl.
She was four, maybe five, and she had a long, stringy lump of chewed skin and meat dangling from between her clenched teeth.
She might once have been cute, but now she looked savage, demonic. Her pyjamas and her blonde hair were clotted with chunks of shredded flesh and skin.
Sam saw that even now the girl's fingers were buried deep in the bowl of pulped, bloody meat that the woman's back had become. In fact, the girl had ripped so many layers from the woman's back that she had exposed the white, blood-smeared nubs of her vertebrae.
Sam took all of this on board in one, maybe two seconds. Then Purna swung her chair leg with both hands and smashed the girl across the face with it. There was a crunch, and the girl's face seemed to cave in.
As she fell backward into the carpeted hotel corridor, limbs flailing like a giant white spider that had lost half its legs, Sam saw with a kind of dreamy horror that beneath the coating of blood and gore she was wearing My Little Pony pyjamas.
Without hesitation, Purna followed up her attack, jumping over the woman and battering the girl around the head again and again with the chair leg, not giving her time to recover. Despite the ferocity of the attack, the girl's body twitched and heaved and scrabbled, as if she was not only trying to raise herself but also trying to fight back.
Grimly, Purna kept whacking the girl's head until her skull was nothing but an unrecognizable pulp, and her body was still. By the time she stood back, panting and sweating, she was spattered with blood from head to toe, and the chair leg was coated with a viscous gruel of blood, flesh, bone, hair, and slick, porridgey gobbets of brain matter.
Sam glanced at Logan, who was shaking, white-faced. Catching his eye, Logan muttered, 'Man, that was intense.'
Stepping over the still-twitching, keening body of the woman, grimacing at the gore squelching beneath his size eleven Reeboks, Sam walked up to Purna and put his arm around her shoulder. She flinched slightly but didn't resist.
'Hey,' he said, 'you OK?'
She looked at him. Her eyes were over-bright, her face a little too composed. 'Fine,' she said.
'You don't have to be,' he told her. 'I'm not sure I am.'
Purna clenched her jaw and looked almost callously down at the sprawled, now-pathetic body of the little girl.
'Then I guess you'd better learn to be. This is something we're all going to have to get used to.'
Shrugging off his arm, she turned and marched back to the woman, who was gasping and juddering now, her eyes wide with trauma, her breath coming in wheezy, panicked gasps.
Squatting beside her, Purna said, 'We can't leave her like this. Either she'll turn, or more of those things will get her.'
'You think we should take her with us?' asked Sam, frowning.
Purna shook her head. 'She's beyond help, and she'd only slow us down. We need to put her out of her misery.'
Sam blinked. 'You serious?'
'No, I'm joking,' she snapped. 'There's nothing better than a good laugh to lighten a serious situation.'
Sam raised his hands. 'OK, OK. Sorry.' Turning his head and lowering his voice, he said, 'So … how we gonna do it?'
'We haven't got time to debate or draw straws,' Purna said. Then, putting her gore-covered chair leg aside, she reached out and took the woman's head almost tenderly in her hands. Leaning over her, she murmured, 'It's OK, don't worry.' Then, with a practiced twist, she broke the woman's neck.
'Jesus,' muttered Sam.
Standing out on the landing between staircases, Logan looked as if he was trying not to throw up. 'Where did you learn to do
'Girl Guides,' replied Purna. She picked up the chair leg and without another word stepped back over the body of the woman and started down the next flight of stairs.
Logan scurried after her, Sam bringing up the rear.
'You think that'll be enough?' Logan said. 'Breaking her neck, I mean?'
Purna halted briefly to glare at him. 'You wanna go back and hack her head off? If so, be my guest.'
Logan tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace. 'That's OK. I'll pass.'
They descended the next few flights in silence, Sam all too aware of the stink of blood and raw meat coming off Purna's clothes.
He was aware too that Purna was still at the head of the group and therefore would be in the frontline if any more action went down. Pushing past Logan, he caught up with Purna a couple of steps ahead of him.
'First to the bar buys the drinks,' Logan called.
Sam glanced back at him. 'Just thought I'd take pole position, if that's OK with you? Figured Purna here had done her share of zombie-bashing for now.' He looked askance at Purna. 'That fine with you?'
Purna was looking straight ahead, face set, jaw clenched. When she caught Sam's eye, her features softened slightly. 'Sure,' she said. 'My arm is pretty tired.'
Sam gave a nod and stepped in front of her. They were descending the stairs below the landing to floor three when he halted, holding up a hand.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone