The creature was less than 200 metres away now. "Get back into the Humvee," said Cutshaw. We obeyed unhesitatingly.

Cutshaw took an RPG-7 out of a steel box and loaded it with a HE (High Explosive) round. He checked the back-blast area, sighted the flesh-eater, calmly waited until it was within optimum range and fired. The warhead detonated and when the smoke cleared the zombie was gone.

"Have you ever seen anything like that before?" I asked Cutshaw as he got into the Humvee.

"No."

It gave me a bad feeling when he said that. I thought about Dean and Al and about all the improbable tales Hooch had told us and for a second I was tempted to suggest we call the whole trip off. I couldn't bring myself to do it, though. I'd worked my b.a.l.l.s off all winter for this chance. Besides, I'd never be able to look anyone in the eye again if I arrived home without a single kill under my belt. I glanced at the others, wondering what they were thinking. Jim looked dazed. He kept shaking his head and murmuring, "How?"

Bob seemed unperturbed. "I reckon it was a one-off," he said, "nothing more."

Tommy nodded. "Yeah, a one-off that's what it was."

I could see he desperately wanted to believe Bob was right, but there was little conviction in his voice. He looked to me for it.

"What do you reckon, Mikey?"

"I reckon Bob must be right," I said, more because I didn't want Tommy freaking out on us than because I believed it.

"I don't know about that," said Jim, "but I'm gonna get one of them RPGs and next time one of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds refuses to stay down," he made as if taking aim, "ka-f.u.c.king-boom!"

There was little talk during the remainder of the journey. We stared at the changing landscape, lost in our own worlds. The pine-clad hills were gradually petering out into dusty plains and in the west there were mountains with patches of snow on their peaks. A vast turquoise lake fed by glacial melt-water lapped against their feet.

Camp 24 had its back to this lake. There were lots of serious looking characters in camp, men whose faces told dark stories. They gave us sly, appraising looks and quickly decided there was nothing we could tell them that they wanted to hear. It started to rain as we pitched our tents. We ate a miserable cold meal and hunkered down for the night.

Day Five.

After breakfast we hired a boat with an outboard motor and took it across the water. Conditions were perfect. Not a breath of wind disturbed the lake's surface which reflected a cloudless sky. All of us were in good spirits, even Tommy. It may sound like a cliche, but the rain seemed to have washed away our fear and uncertainty.

We moored at a jetty in the shadow of an imposing b.u.t.tress of black rock and hiked along an unsealed road that led to an opencast mine on a high plateau. To one side of the road was a rusted railway track that'd once been used to transport millions of tons of coal a year to the coast where it was shipped to steel-mills in j.a.pan, China, South Africa and Brazil. All around were signs of recent rock-fall.

About two miles along the road there was a stone-built bunkhouse. We let Franz sniff the place out before taking a look ourselves. The walls inside were scratched all over with names and dates, some going back more than a hundred years. Coats and hardhats still hung on pegs with steel-toed boots neatly arranged beneath them. I pictured miners fleeing barefooted as the Apocalypse came down.

"It's like they were here just a minute ago," Tommy said in a hushed voice.

Not far from the bunkhouse was a rusty old pickup truck with a flesh-eater sat behind its steering-wheel. Bob shot it through the gla.s.s. There was a moment of tension as we waited to see if one shot would be enough. When it became apparent that the creature was dead, Bob gave me a look as if to say, I told you so.

We shot three more on the way up to the mine. They lined up on a hump in the road like tin cans on a wall. Tommy took the first one, a grossly fat woman who toppled off the side of the road and bounced away down a thousand foot scree-slope. Me and Jim took the other two. I dropped mine cleanly. Jim chopped his into meat with the AK-47 going full tilt. We threw them both down the scree slope just for the h.e.l.l of it.

Further on was a rail terminal to which coal was once carried by an aerial ropeway that ran for several miles down vertiginous slopes. We ate lunch in the terminal, which had been fortified for use by hunting parties.

Two hours of hard slog took us from the terminal to the mine. We looked out over the vast workings marvelling at what our ancestors had been capable of. The sheer scale of it was difficult to comprehend.

Cutshaw pointed to a bunch of shadowy forms emerging from a cave 100 metres to our right and almost 400 metres below us. There were four of them. Their mournful groans reached us faintly. We picked them off at leisure, making amazing shots. Jim smashed his PB by 55 metres. We finished the last one off by rolling a huge boulder into the hole, cheering when it scored a direct hit.

The walk down felt easy. We motored across the bay, taking turns at the wheel. Back at camp, as the evening breeze soothed our sunburnt faces, we cracked open bottles of beer and congratulated each other on the shots we'd made. We all agreed it'd been the best day's hunting we'd ever had.

Day Six.

At daybreak pretty much the entire camp was on the move. A line of hummers kicked up dust on the road south like a wagon-train out of an old cowboy movie. Jim was keen to follow them. Tommy wanted to stay put. We put it to a vote and Jim came out on top, so we hit the road. Mountains reared up on every side as we crossed an immense dustbowl. The wind whipped in from the east, stirring up clouds of reddish-brown dirt that shrouded the sun.

After we'd been going about six hours, Cutshaw slammed his foot on the brake. "There's something in the road up ahead."

I squinted through the gla.s.s, but it was impossible to see more than twenty paces. "Stay here," said Cutshaw when I picked up my rifle. He unfolded the stock on his Micro-UZI and got out of the Humvee followed by Franz. We fingered our weapons as the dust cloud swallowed them.

After a couple of minutes he reappeared, grim-faced, and hauled an ethanol canister out of the boot. We all knew what this meant. "One of you come with me," he said.

I was first out of the Humvee. I hurried after Cutshaw, shielding my eyes from the dust-laden wind. After thirty metres I saw a dim form that gradually revealed itself as a Humvee with its front end smashed in. A scene of carnage unfolded. All around the Humvee lay dead flesh-eaters, their oily blood pooling on the hard-packed dirt. A couple of them looked like stage ones. Grave-wax had only just begun to form on their cheeks (for those of you that don't know, grave-wax is a crumbly, white substance that starts to form on those parts of the zombie's body that contain fat within a month of turning). Inside the vehicle were three corpses in hunting gear. All of them had been decapitated.

"I knew these men," said Cutshaw. "They were in Camp 27 last night."

"Where are their heads?" I asked, unable to keep a tremor out of my voice.

Cutshaw knelt at the front of the Humvee, studying the road's surface and the crumpled bull-bars.

"Perhaps they hit another hummer," I suggested.

"No they didn't."

"What did they hit then?" I asked, but Cutshaw made no reply.

We dragged the bodies out of the Humvee and piled them up at the roadside along with seven dead flesh-eaters, working safe in the knowledge that Franz would warn us if we were in any danger. I stood well back as Cutshaw set fire to the heap. Franz barked as we pushed the damaged Humvee off the road. Cutshaw peered into the dust-cloud, Micro-UZI at the ready. After a moment, he signalled to me and we hurried back to our Humvee.

"Jesus Christ. What happened there?" asked Jim as we accelerated past the funeral pyre.

I told what I knew, half-listening to Cutshaw trying to contact the nearest camp on the radio.

"But what the h.e.l.l did they hit?" wondered Bob. "There's nothing out here."

"This is bad," said Tommy.

"This is way beyond bad," I said.

"What do you think?" Bob asked Cutshaw, who'd given up on the radio.

"I don't know," he said matter-of-factly.

There was a long moment of silence. For a second time in the s.p.a.ce of three days Cutshaw didn't have an answer. Once was bad enough. But twice! In my experience, such a thing just didn't happen. I don't mind admitting that I was shaken to my core. It was like the ground had shifted beneath my feet. I suddenly knew with absolute certainty that I'd been wrong not to follow my instinct and abandon the trip. Determined not to repeat my mistake, I opened my mouth to speak, but Bob beat me to it.

"How far are we from Camp 33?" he asked. I could tell from his voice that he was thinking the same as me.

Cutshaw knew what he was thinking, too. "We haven't got time to make it back to Camp 27 before nightfall," he said.

"Hang on, are you suggesting we give up and head home?" said Jim, frowning.

"That's exactly what I'm suggesting," said Bob.

"But why?"

"Because there's something happening down here that I don't want any part of."

"It was an accident, that's all."

"I don't think so."

Jim snorted. "Well, Bob, I never thought you were the type to buy into the kind of nonsense that whacko kid was spouting." He turned to Cutshaw. "Go on, tell him how wrong he's got it." When no reply was forthcoming, his forehead wrinkled with uncertainty.

All this talk was too much for Tommy. "Oh man," he groaned, covering his eyes with his hands. "This is great, just f.u.c.king great."

"Take it easy," I said. "Tomorrow we're heading back north."

"You too, eh, Mikey." Jim shook his head at me in a self-righteous, pitying sort of way as if I'd admitted to something shameful.

I stared hard at him. "You just don't get it do you, Jim?"

"The only thing I get is that I'm riding with a bunch of gutless wonders."

Jim had no right to say such a thing, and he knew it. I bit my tongue to stifle an angry response, realising it wouldn't do anyone any good if we had a big falling out. A year ago I'd have given him the hairdryer treatment, but since dad's disappearance I've thought a lot more carefully about what I say to people in the heat of the moment. Besides, I could tell from Jim's face that he was already regretting what he'd said.

"Sorry, Mikey," he mumbled after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence.

"Forget it."

"It's just that we've all worked so hard for this, I can't believe we're going to give it up. We might not get out here again until next year."

"At least this way there'll be a next year."

"I suppose," Jim said grudgingly.

"There's no suppose about it," said Bob.

Jim flashed him an irritated look, then settled to staring out the window. I didn't blame him for being so sore. I knew he needed this trip more than any of us after the year he'd had on Robertson Island.

A voice crackled over the radio. "Car 316, this is car 211, are you receiving us? Over."

As Cutshaw reached for the handset, the Humvee emerged from the dust-storm into an eye of calm. A couple of hundred metres away a black SUV was parked at the roadside facing us. Cutshaw pulled up alongside it, winding his window down. "You're looking for car 316," he said.

The driver of the SUV nodded. "We got a call off them an hour ago to say they'd hit a tree that was blocking the road." Rolling his eyes at the treeless plain, he continued, "I know it sounds crazy, but that's what they said. We thought maybe they were having us on."

"They weren't having you on," said Cutshaw, and he told the driver about our grisly discovery.

"Jesus," murmured the man. "Where you headed?"

"Camp 33."

"We've just come from there. I'll follow you back in."

Everybody who was anybody in the hunting world was in Camp 33. The place was as cramped as a battery hen's cage. There was a tacit hierarchy as to who camped where, with grizzled veterans towards the centre of the site and ambitious young guns at its outer edge. We pitched our tents in the shadow of the perimeter-fence. As news of car 316's fate spread, we found ourselves at the centre of attention. All those flint-faced men who hadn't wanted to know us the night before last sidled over to hear the tale. By dusk I must've told it thirty times. There was a general consensus that it was the work of a thinker whose intelligence far exceeded anything previously encountered. As one wiry old dude put it, "We're talking about the G.o.dd.a.m.n Einstein of zombies here."

Hooch was there, too, whacked out of his skull on Christ knows what. As soon as I saw him I knew there was going to be trouble. He staggered over to us waving the biggest revolver I've ever seen and yelling, "Where's that b.a.s.t.a.r.d who broke my jaw?"

"I think you mean me," said Bob, cool as ever.

Hooch glared at him. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

Here we go again, I thought, dropping my hand to the grip of my Beretta, but suddenly Hooch was grinning from ear to ear and embracing Bob like a long lost brother. "Man, it's good to see you guys," he said. "I was starting to think you'd p.u.s.s.ied out." He turned to me, wild-eyed. "Look at this place. Just look at it! d.a.m.n, this is gonna be good."

"We're heading back north tomorrow," said Jim.

Hooch eyed him disbelievingly. "You gotta be s.h.i.tting me."

"Afraid not."

Hooch scrunched his face up and scratched his head, then his grin returned. "That's a good one," he laughed, wagging his gun at Jim. He tottered off, shouting over his shoulder, "I'll see you guys later."

Pulling faces like a child that's been told it has to leave a party early, Jim ducked into his tent and yanked the zipper down.

We sat silent beside our campfire. There was a buzz about the campground that was impossible to ignore, a feeling that something momentous was about to happen. Just being around it was enough to make your hair stand on end. I resisted it for as long as I could, but it was no good.

"Maybe we were a bit hasty back there," I said.

"Maybe," said Bob.

"Shall we make some dum-dums?"

"If you want."

And just like that it was agreed. Both of us understood that we wouldn't be heading north in the morning. We carefully began pulling handgun bullets out of their cartridges with pliers. I hammered the end of each bullet flat, before Bob carved a cross into the even surface with a hacksaw. This causes the bullet to split open on impact, blowing a hole about ten inches in diameter through your target. Very nasty and totally lethal. The only problem is the bullet's effective accuracy is reduced to around ten metres-a h.e.l.l of a lot closer than I've ever been to a live flesh-eater. Nevertheless, we always went through this ritual before a really dangerous hunt. I guess it's kind of a psychological prop.

Tommy and Jim stuck their heads out of their tent at the sound of my hammering. Tommy went pale when he saw what was going on.

A wolfish grin split Jim's face. "I knew you boys wouldn't let me down." He grabbed Tommy in a headlock and knuckled the crown of his head.

"Get off." Tommy jerked free, jumped up and stomped away.

"Tommy," I called after him.

"Go f.u.c.k yourself," he retorted.

"Leave him," said Jim. "He'll get over it."

As the light dropped, a swirling wind got up. Before getting into my sleeping-bag, I hammered extra pegs into the guide-ropes. The wind built until the tent quivered like a hovercraft about to lift-off.

"Do you hear that?" Bob said suddenly.

I listened hard, but heard nothing.

"There it is again," said Bob.