HEART OF DARKNESS [3]

"I'll live," replied Sam, and then almost laughed at the irony of his statement. "Yeah, but will the poor bastard who bit you?" shouted Logan.

"Oh, hang on. I forgot.

That's something he doesn't have to worry about."

"It wasn't a he, it was a she," shouted Sam. "And she took my fucking shoe."

"I'm jealous," Logan replied.

"What is the secret of your success with the ladies, man?" "I guess you either got it or you ain't," Sam yelled back. Their loud exchange had at least caused the survivors at the far end of the village to stop bickering.

Sam imagined them all perched up in the branches of their trees, shocked into silence at this unexpected intrusion into their village.

One thing they ought to be grateful for, however, was the fact that the majority of the infected, perhaps realizing that their prey was inaccessible for now, were drifting towards the new arrivals, presumably in the hope of easier pickings.

If so, then they were going to be disappointed – if zombies could be disappointed, that was. "OK, let's do this," Purna shouted from across the clearing.

"You ready, Sam?" Sam unslung his rifle, raised it to his shoulder, and pointed it down at the ground. "Ready."

"Ladies and gentlemen," Logan announced loudly, "we are just about to make a hell of a fucking noise. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause."

Then they started firing.

"Operation Fish in a Barrel" Purna had called it, a name that was nothing but apt.

Sam felt almost guilty as he sat in his tree, firing down at the milling hordes below. Oblivious to fear and danger, the infected didn't run or seek cover; they simply stood there, allowing themselves to be picked off.

For over five minutes, Sam, Purna, and Logan kept firing and reloading, pumping round after round into the hungry dead, shattering skulls and destroying brains with the same clinical determination they might show if they were eradicating a nest of ants.

By the time it was over, the ground beneath Sam's tree was a thick lake of blood, a swamp of pulped and fallen flesh.

The stink that rose from it made him feel sick, and already he was wondering how he could possibly avoid having to wade through it when he climbed down.

After so much activity, the gun was hot in his hands and the shockwaves of the hundreds of rounds he had fired rippled through his body like a never-ending echo.

He felt his hearing had gone into trauma, his jaw ached from having been clenched so tightly, and the double pulse in his temples seemed to prompt an answering beat from the bite-wound in his calf.

Aside from the throbbing of his own body, for several minutes after the shooting was over, Sam experienced nothing but a deep, almost profound silence.

He suspected that, like him, Purna and Logan were sitting quietly, alone with their thoughts, perhaps trying to come to terms with the oddly heightened reality of what they had just done, or attempting to make sense of the conflicting emotions of exhilaration and self-loathing battling for supremacy in their heads. Sam felt enervated, but at the same time so alert it was like a caffeine buzz.

He felt heavy and weightless, centered and scattered, light and dark. Time seemed meaningless, and at the same time, he was almost achingly aware of every passing second. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again it felt like the world had changed.

At last, slowly, he climbed down from the tree. When he reached the lowest branch, he shimmied along until it started to bend, and then he jumped.

Despite clearing the base of the tree by a good five meters, he still landed at the very edge of the killing ground, his shoeless foot landing in blood that had the consistency of cold, partly set jelly. Grimacing, he trudged out onto the dusty main street, leaving a trail of red footprints behind him.

As if by mutual consent, Purna and Logan emerged from between huts on the other side of the street at exactly the same moment, and they all walked towards each other, like outlaws meeting for a noon showdown.

No one said anything, though the looks that passed between them seemed to convey how they were feeling far more eloquently than words.

As one, they turned and walked towards the cluster of trees at the far end of the village, and as they got closer, the survivors began to drop to the ground, one by one, like strange fruit. Most prominent among them was a man with long matted hair, whose dark-skinned body was painted in swirling red and white shapes.

He wore a crocodile-skin cape, and when he walked the bone ornamentation adorning his wrists, ankles, and neck jangled ominously. Showing no fear, he marched up to the three visitors to his village, drawing a ceremonial dagger from his belt as he did so.

Purna tensed and half raised her gun, but the man halted a couple of meters from them, placed the dagger on his palm with the blade pointing towards his own chest and dropped to his knees.

He tilted his upper body forward as though in supplication, his forehead all but touching the dusty ground, and stretched out his right hand, offering them the dagger. Logan looked at Purna. "I think that means he likes you," he said.