The Mariner (29 page)

“Don’t you understand? We’re not agents of a demon! Pryce turned Mindless!”

But Diane had grown impatient to their protests. “Burn the murderers!” she snarled, a faint laugh gracing her lips. “There’s no such thing as Mindless!”

And it was then that the Mindless attacked.

30
EXODUS

S
CREAMS FROM THE OUTER FRINGES
of the crowd brought a halt to the burning. Confused, the congregation remained still, hoping the chilling sound was the normal day-to-day business of challenging déjà vu. Only when strange figures launched themselves into the light, clawing and biting those closest, did panic truly spread.

An elderly monk stood aside whilst he allowed those younger than he to construct the pyre, suddenly found himself seized from behind. The creature sank teeth into his neck and plunged fingers deep into his eye sockets, swivelling them around as a child would probe their nose. He battered weakly at his attacker whilst a wet sticky goo ran down his cheeks.

Another, not far from the old man, saw a Mindless coming, but was so confused by the situation all she could do was ask, “Who are you?” before the creature smashed her head with a rock. Her body collapsed to the floor while it stood above her, repeatedly bringing its primitive weapon down upon her skull.

The man who’d been keeping a close hold of the Mariner bolted, following the lead of his associates. They fled in all directions, only to find that the Mindless were all about them. Rather than an organised attack, it was an infestation.

Diane, until moments before so full of fire and fury, now seemed lost and timid. “What’s happening? Who are they?” Her eyes widened as she backed away from the Mariner and McConnell. “Did you summon them?”

“Of course we didn’t, you stupid bitch!” McConnell snapped as his head weaved in panic between her and the oncoming fiends. “Untie us!”

But Diane was already gone, retreating back along the bridge to the small platform in the middle of the pool as if the ring of water would form a protective barrier.

“Come back! Those fucking dolphins won’t help you!” McConnell gave a yell as he felt hands at his back. They turned out to be Grace pulling at the ropes. “Oh thank you God! Be quick girl, be quick!”

After pulling his binds loose, Grace moved to the Mariner, though the rope around him proved tighter. McConnell grabbed the thickest stick he could find from the pyre and stood protectively behind the girl.

“Faster! Faster!”

The Mariner watched helplessly as a Mindless looked up from a corpse, roving eyes suddenly fixing upon him with mad intensity. The fiend had once been a young man, probably no more than seventeen; now he were a beast, acting on a fury that consumed its all.

“Arthur,” whispered McConnell. “Are you armed?”

“No, I dropped my gun at the beach.”

“Fuck.”

And the creature began to charge.

“Pleasepleaseplease,” Grace was muttering under her breath as she moved to free the Mariner’s hands.

The Mindless was close now and McConnell strode out as if to bat a baseball. He tensed, a peaceful man trying to prepare for violence, nervous, toying. But as it came close he swung true, the stick connecting with the side of the Mindless’ head, twirling it around and dropping. There it howled, gripping its temple, trying to lift itself, yet failing to maintain any balance. It reminded the reverend of a dying fly, wings useless, yet still desperate to take flight.

“Got it!” Grace cried in triumph, the thick ropes falling to their captor’s knees. The Mariner, free from bondage, returned to his feet.

“Reverend, grab me one of those sticks, we need to get moving!” McConnell didn’t respond. “Reverend?”

“He’s just a boy,” he muttered, looking at the thrashing Mindless on the floor. “No more than a child.”

“McConnell, for fuck sake!” The Mariner ran past the stunned reverend and grabbed a weapon for himself. “We need to get out of here, now!”

“Where did they come from?” Grace asked though tears as she clutched McConnell’s waist. Her touch snapped him from his trance even though he had no answer to give.

All about them were scenes of chaos. Figures dashed to and fro in the flickering hell. Torches dropped, some extinguished whilst others creating isolated fires, eager to cooperate and grow strong.

“Grab one of those,” the Mariner commanded, pointing Grace towards a discarded torch, still burning brightly. “Lead the way, and if one gets close, aim for the face.”

Nervously, the three began to inch away from the pool, back the way the Mariner had been dragged. McConnell and the Mariner stood on either side of Grace, trying to look in every direction at once.

“Don’t leave me!”

The voice sounded shrill and young. It was Diane. She stood on her throne, surrounded by the circle of water and then an even greater circle of carnage, cutting a lonely silhouette. A Mindless heard her cry, its eyes immediately searching for she who made it. It focused upon her and, without a flinch, dropped into the pool, haphazardly swimming to reach her tiny island.

The Mariner felt he should say something, some final word of comfort or condemnation, but thought better. Best to use her as a distraction for their own escape. He put his hand to Grace’s back, and shepherded her away.

As they passed between trees and lost sight of the clearing, Diane began to scream.

Their journey through the zoo was slow, yet that careful inching seemed to cloak them with near invisibility. Mindless pursued monks, each running as erratically as the other, injuring themselves in the pitch black night. Sometimes they would pass by, just yards from where they cowed behind their improvised weapons, only to run on without giving them a sideward glance. In so much confusion, the trio slipped quietly away.

The whole zoo was a cacophony of screams, roars and panicky monkey gibberish, impossible to know where one ended and the other began, just a continuous wail that rose up above the canopy. Up along the path they saw a woman running, not holding a flaming torch, but a small electrical one. It shone a tight cold beam backwards and forwards across the path before her and then up into the Mariner’s face.

“Please, you have to help me!”

Squinting against the beam of light he saw the cook he’d worked alongside in the kitchens, except when he’d met her before she’d been a self-composed, plain young thing; now her face was haunted and drawn. “Megan?” he asked, surprised to find her amongst the chaos.

“A few of us went to retrieve Pryce’s body when we heard wood splitting, like a whole bunch of tree’s being felled. We followed the sound and found it wasn’t that at all, a ship’s run aground!”

“A ship?” The Mariner grabbed Megan in alarm. “What did it look like? Was it the Neptune?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she wailed. “There’s no light! But when we got close, all these evil,
evil
people started attacking us.” Megan burst into tears and fell forward, wrapping her arms around the Mariner, awkwardly holding her in return. “I don’t think anyone else survived. They killed them! Oh God they killed them!”

“Shush now.” McConnell patted her on the shoulder. “We need to keep quiet, don’t worry, you can come with us.”

“She can?” the Mariner asked, alarmed at having another ward to care for.

“Of course,” McConnell continued. “Don’t worry my dear, we’ll protect you.”

“Thank you,” she said wiping tears from her face and struggling to get her sobs under control. “But what can we do?”

“The Mindless were aboard that ship, which means my Neptune is still out there in one piece. We’ll be safe there. But all of you have to
keep quiet
.”

“Oh fuck!” Megan suddenly screamed, seemingly in defiance of his command, and pulled away. The Mariner turned, expecting, as did she, to see Mindless, yet light revealed the approaching figures of several monks, amongst them the man who’d roughly handled the Mariner to his harsh judgement.

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” the man said, holding out his hands to placate her. “It’s just us.”

“Well get going,” the Mariner snarled. “We don’t want you.”

“I’m sorry, don’t you understand? I’m sorry!”

The man’s protests seemed utterly preposterous. What was he trying to achieve? Surely he could see it was every man for himself? And then the Mariner finally realised: they thought the Mariner didn’t want them out of spite, a blunt form or revenge, rather than simple truth of survival.

“Listen, I’ve already got three to care for here!”

The man’s terrified eyes pleaded for clemency. “Strength in numbers!”

“When has that ever been true?”

“We’ve got nowhere else to go!”

“Fine. Just keep quiet, will you?”

And so the three turned four, turned seven, and they continued their slow creep. Behind them, the sounds of violence dissipated, not from distance, but from the confrontations growing less frequent. The monks were dying.

“How much further?” McConnell hissed. “I don’t remember the beach being this far away.”

“I recognise that cage,” said Grace, pointing at a small rusted enclosure up ahead. “It’s not far. How are we going to all fit in the row-boat?”

“They can bloody swim if they have to,” the Mariner said, resenting their new accomplices.

The rough-handed man suddenly started shaking the Mariner’s arm. “Behind, there’s someone behind!”

The small group paused, packed together like penguins, each trying to be as still as a statue whilst they listened to a shuffling creature stumble and snort its way up the path. It was making slow progress, seemingly idle in its journey, yet cloaked in darkness whilst they were lit up.

“Oh God! Oh God!” Megan prayed in a tiny voice. Hands clenched their neighbours as they waited for the inevitable.

The figure slowly stepped into the light. It was a Mindless, her teeth and jaw bloodied from combat. Whomever she had attacked, they had fought back; her face was scratched and left ear torn and hanging by a small shred of skin. Yet the aggressor had been the victor, that could be seen from the globules of flesh smeared across her lips and cheek like war paint.

The Mindless screeched, hands stretched talon-like. Behind, in the darkness for the zoo, countless other Mindless voices joined the call, all sprinting to where they’d heard fresh prey could be found.

The seven survivors ran.

“Get to the beach!” the Mariner screamed, grabbing Grace by her back and lifting the child from the ground. McConnell did his best to help Megan whilst they sprinted in the dark, lit only by the flame Grace held aloft and Megan’s small electric torch.

The strong-handed man, who’d never be able to introduce himself as Clement, made a dash for the rusted cage, throwing himself inside and shutting the door behind. With a gritty crunch, it latched shut and he fell back into the confines, trembling, rubbing his hands over his face to blot out the madness.

The rest ran by, pursued by the Mindless, and with them they took the light. He crouched, whimpering and afraid, and wondered, just what had he done to deserve this fate?

Moments later, he heard the sound of other Mindless, sprinting through the undergrowth, following the sounds of the chase. How many where there? In the dark it sounded like an army, an endless procession of evil.

Eventually they passed and the trees grew quiet.

Clement waited, curled up for what seemed like hours, though it could only have been minutes, for faintly he heard gunfire from the coast.

It didn’t last long.

Was he the only survivor? Probably, the others he’d been with would undoubtedly have been killed by now. Still, all he had to do was wait for first light and then sneak to the shore. There he might be able to swim to that strange captain’s ship and escape. But where to? He had no idea, he knew of no other lands but this, at least in the world he lived in now, but at least he was alive. Alive was good. Alive was enough.

He waited throughout the night, trying to stifle his screams when an insect scuttled across a hand, trying to keep his panic under control when a monkey snapped a branch in the canopy. Thoughts of the evening’s horrors were kept at bay with careful planning of the journey he’d take.

However improbable, Clement slept, perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps as a way of protecting his mind from breaking. When he finally opened his eyes, a moment of doubt caused his heart to leap. Had he died? Was this the foggy wastes of the afterlife? As the beats slowed to a bearable rate, he saw it was not true. The darkness had given way to a dreary misty morning, a thick sea-fog blanketing the island in its soft embrace. Light was dull, but enough to see the way. It was time.

Joints screaming and head pounding, Clement silently got to his feet. He’d played the journey in his head many times; he knew the zoo well and had picked out several hiding spots encase things got dangerous. If any of these creatures, these zombies –
yes
, he thought,
that’s what they must be! Zombies!
- saw him, he would dash to the north, making as much sound as possible and then silently double back. The fog gave cover and these were stupid creatures, they could be deceived.