The Mariner

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?”