by Alex Scarrow
“Can you see anything?”
The officer shook his head. “Nothing that looks problematic, Mr. Friedmann.”
He tried again. “Sea Queen. Sea Queen. This is fleet leader USS Oakley. Please respond. Over.”
The radio crackled in reply. “USS Oakley, this is Sea Queen responding. This is Sea Queen, over!”
“What the hell’s going on over there?” asked Tom. “We got something about you guys testing and getting a positive result? Over.”
He released the press-to-talk button. The speaker hissed again.
“Uh…yeah. That’s.…” The voice on the other end of the call sounded shaken, the poor bastard holding on to some semblance of self-control by his fingernails. “We… Shit! Affirmative. We’ve got several positives! They just went off on us like firecrackers… What?” The transmission stayed open; whoever he was talking to was panting, gasping for breath. In the background, Tom thought he could hear other voices.
Panicked voices.
Tom cut over him. “Have you contained the…” He hesitated and looked around. There were civilians on either side of him, well within earshot. The girl on his right was staring at him with a mouth wide enough to catch fish. He twisted and turned his back on her. “Have you successfully contained the positives? Over.”
The reply came back quickly. “Uh…no. That’s a negative! We’ve got… We’re having some difficulties here. Over.”
Tom waited for more, then gave up waiting. “I need more details. Over.”
“My God!” It sounded like a different voice. “My God, they did the same thing as Southampton! About a dozen of them, all at the same time! The…the…main hall…the testing area, it’s overrun! Jesus Christ…the people who were waiting in there, all of them…” The transmission remained open. Tom thought he could hear the man sobbing. “…Oh God. They’re everywhere. We’re screwed!”
Tom cut across him again. “Listen to me. I’m the senior coordinator. Is the entire ship compromised or do you have a portion of the ship that’s secure? Over.”
“They…they turned into the crab things and they’re everywhere! They’re in everything! Jesus Christ! They’re no—”
“Stay calm and listen to me!” he snapped. “Where are you calling from? Over.”
“The bridge! The bridge! There’s about fifty or so of us up here. Civilians and crew. We’ve closed the…the doors and all the windows! And I…I can see more people outside on the foredeck. They’re not infected yet, but…” The radio spat out hissing.
Tom waited thirty seconds. “Come back, Sea Queen. We’re listening. Over.” No reply.
He tried again and got nothing.
He turned to Captain Donner for his thoughts.
“Good God,” Donner muttered. “We have to do something for those poor bastards.”
“I’m open to any suggestions.”
Donner shook his head. “I… There’s nothing…no protocol, no—”
“We should send over a rescue boat and—”
“Then what? For Chrissakes, I’m not going to order any of my crewmen to go aboard!”
“Those people…on the bridge, they could jump overboard. We could try picking them up.”
“The water’s freezing, sir. They won’t last more than a couple of minutes.”
“A couple of minutes is enough if we’ve got boats out there waiting for them. We have to try.”
“And what if they’re infected? We’ll be bringing infection into the fleet!”
“They won’t be!” came a voice from behind them.
Tom turned around. A dark-haired girl with a walking stick was grasping the safety rail beside him.
“What did you just say?”
“I…” Her mouth flapped uselessly for a moment. She’d obviously not been expecting to be heard. Or noticed, even. She finally found her voice though. “If they’re infected, they won’t jump in. They won’t do it.”
“Why?”
“Salt! It’s salt water, right? They sort of melt in salt.”
Tom winced at his stupidity. The girl was right. They had been testing for a reaction with saline solution. A good dunking in seawater would do exactly the same thing.
“Get some rescue boats over there,” he said, turning to Captain Donner.
Captain Donner nodded reluctantly and passed the order on to his executive officer.
“Damn well hurry up about it!” he bellowed as the junior officer walked back across the helipad. He turned back to look aft, then pressed the PTT button on his handset. “Sea Queen, Sea Queen. We are sending over some rescue boats right away. If you are able to do it, jump over the side when they arrive. We’ll be there to pick you up quickly. Over.”
The handset hissed, then finally crackled. “Understood. Out.”
Donner stood back from the railing. “I should brief the fleet.”
Tom nodded—“Do it.”—and watched him go.
“Excuse me,” said the girl to his right.
“What?”
“Are the people on that ship all from Calais? I didn’t see that ship at Southampton.”
“Mostly,” he replied absently. “There are some Brits on there too though. Why do you ask?”
“I got separated from someone when it all went out of control. I just… He…they might be on there.”
“Once we’ve checked them over, we’ll add any we manage to save to the fleet manifest.” He turned to go.
“Hold on. Is that like a passenger list?”
“Yes, exactly like a passenger list. It’ll be made available once all of the fleet’s testing has been completed.”
And maybe my kids’ names will be there.
“Could I give you my friends’ names, you know, just to look out for?”
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “Just check the list when it’s done and posted, OK?”
Chapter 8
“That’s good.” Leon nodded approvingly at Artur’s handiwork. He had found some luggage carts in the warehouse and detached several handles from the bottoms of their chassis. He’d removed the floor mesh from several of the large cages and then secured them to the wheeled bases.
They now had four floorless cages on little caster wheels. Which was just as well, since the cages themselves had turned out to be surprisingly heavy. Given that none of them had eaten anything but a few dried dog biscuits in the last five days, their ability to physically function was beginning to shut down.
“Two people per cage, and we’ll have to squeeze three of us into one of them.” He looked around for the best candidates for that. “Kim, Finley”—they were both small and narrow-framed—“and Howard would be best.”
Howard nodded. “Makes sense.”
“And the rest of us… I think we need to pair up those who still have some energy with those who aren’t doing so well.” Leon expected pushback from the fitter members of their group; Jake was holding out pretty well, and Dawn still seemed to have some fire in her.
Artur and Cora were struggling. But Adewale, six foot tall and almost as broad, was the most affected. He was all muscle and zero fat, and all of that muscle was crying out for sustenance. Leon thought he might have been a wrestler or a boxer.
No one objected to Leon’s pairings. No one seemed to have the energy in them to object to anything right now.
“I’ll go with Cora.” He looked at Jake. “Will you go with Adewale?”
“Sure.”
“So, Dawn, you’re with Artur.”
She nodded, while Artur frowned at the mention of his name. He was slumped against a concrete wall, exhausted and worn out from helping to assemble their cages on wheels.
“There’s no point delaying this,” said Leon. “We’re all suffering; we’re getting weaker, dizzy and stuff. The sooner we do this, the better our chances are
going to be.”
Again, there were no objections. Stepping outside felt like suicide to Leon, but it would be a faster one than staying in here and starving to death.
For a moment, he wondered what Dad would have made of this little scene: his under-achieving, sulking son actually showing some leadership. He’d probably find something to pick at.
“So we’re heading straight toward the red Goddards truck out there?” said Finley.
They’d discussed the objective as the light had faded the previous night. The truck was parked a couple hundred yards away, just outside the open delivery doors of a large warehouse. They’d gone to sleep with that objective in mind. But overnight, Leon had been having second thoughts. The truck was right outside a dark cavernous entrance, from which God knows how many virals might swarm out, and there were no other vehicles to be seen nearby. His thinking—his concern—was that the truck had presumably been sitting there for nearly three years, and more than likely wasn’t going to start. The battery would be dead. If so, they might be able to escape into another building nearby, but then it would be a lottery as to whether the building was occupied with waiting virals.
On the other hand, he knew where there were a number of vehicles that certainly did work.
“We’re gonna head for the camp. There’ll be supplies. Food.”
Dawn shook her head. “You serious? No bloody way I’m going back there!”
Cora chimed in. “We only just managed to escape from there.”
“No, hold on. He’s right,” said Jake. “There’s more chance we’ll find a working vehicle there. If the red truck’s dead…then we’re dead too.”
Leon nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. Those soldiers had a bunch of trucks and Humvees that worked just fine. They left Southampton in a real hurry, so I’m thinking the vehicles are still there, keys still in the ignition.”
“And all sorts of useful supplies,” said Jake.
“Guns?” added Finley.
“Right.” Leon shrugged. “If the virus isn’t still massed down at the waterfront, it could be a treasure trove of stuff.”
“And if the virus is still there?” asked Adewale. He was slumped against the wall next to Artur, his knees drawn up, wrists resting on them, big hands dangling like ripe fruit.
“We will be in trouble.”
“We are already,” replied Jake. “We stay here another day, and we’ll be lucky if we can even walk out, let alone push around a heavy cage. It’s a sound plan, Leon, mate. I think it’s the best way to go.”
There was another reason for going that Leon wasn’t prepared to share. He needed to see, just to be sure. Freya had been wearing that bright-orange anorak—one of those cheap ones that could fold up into a fanny pack. He needed to know it wasn’t lying somewhere on the cold, hard concrete, tangled up among bones and a walking stick.
“I’d say the virus will have relocated by now from the open waterfront into these warehouse buildings,” said Finley. “It seems to prefer being under cover.”
“And it’s close to what they’re after,” added Jake.
Us.
“Who’s leading?” asked Leon.
“Your idea. That makes you the project manager,” said Jake. “No pressure.” He grinned.
“Shit.” Leon took in a deep breath and puffed it out. “OK, all those who say we try for the red truck nearby?”
He looked around.
No hands. No dissenters.
No reason to delay.
“OK. All right then,” he huffed.
“Right,” echoed Adewale.
“Right,” added Dawn. “We doin’ this or what?”
They had the four rolling cages lined up beside the building’s delivery door, everyone already inside them and bent over. Leon was standing beside his cage looking at their bizarre train—each one containing two crouching people, except the second to last, with Howard at the front, then Finley, then Kim.
“Is everyone ready?” asked Leon.
Cora was holding the back of the cage up, ready for him to hurry back under. “Come on. Let’s just get this done, love.”
“God,” uttered Dawn. “We’re really doing this?”
Several of the cages rattled softly, hands shaking as they held on to them.
Yeah, we’re doing this.
“Everyone remember which way to head?” he continued. “We go right out of this door, then keep going toward the warehouse with the red truck parked outside it. Turn left, go around the end of it, then keep going straight for the waterfront.”
“When we get to the waterfront?”
His memory map of the area was hazy. He’d been running away from the outbreak at night and in a blind panic. He was pretty sure, though, that the wharf was an endless, open, football-stadium-wide area of concrete that they weren’t going to miss.
“We should be able to see the camp to our left. Or at least what’s left of it. We’ll head toward the nearest army truck. If that doesn’t work, then we go to the next until we find one that’s good to go.”
Here’s the part I don’t want to say.
“One rule. No one stops for anything, OK?”
“Anything?” echoed Howard.
“Anything.” Leon could see they knew what he was saying—every cage for itself. If anybody got stuck, they were going to have get unstuck by themselves.
“And another one. No purposeful farting in my face, Addy,” said Jake. His head was a few inches away from Adewale’s huge behind.
“Gas powered, man,” he replied over his shoulder.
There was a ripple of forced laughter from their assembled convoy.
“OK.” Leon approached the delivery doors. “This is it.” He ducked down to examine the sliver of light spilling through. From time to time over the last five days, they’d seen spindly shadows breaking the long dash of daylight: small crabs drawn to their smell, testing the tiny gap, and then giving up. They’d found a large drum of disinfectant and soaked the floor along the base of the doors. It had seemed to work; the virus hadn’t attempted to grow any tendrils through the narrow gap.
He couldn’t see any shuffling shadows outside. “Coast is clear,” he said quietly.
The delivery doors were braced by an improvised locking bar: three lengths of copper wires that had been pulled from the shower in the staff locker room. Artur had rammed them through the doors’ looping handles.
Leon slid the locking bars out one by one, trying to make as little scraping noise as possible. The last bar clanged slightly as he set it down on the floor. He froze and, after a couple of seconds, stood up straight and slowly let out a breath. The doors were unsecured. He looked back again at the others and saw nothing but the whites of their eyes—pair after pair, round and frightened—and wondered if he looked as shit-scared as they did.
He held up a hand and counted down on his fingers.
Five…
Four…
Three…
Two…
One.
He pushed the left-hand door open a crack. Daylight flooded in and momentarily dazzled him, even though the sky was overcast. Heart racing, he peered out and scanned their immediate surroundings.
The ground outside was mottled with the virus’s veinlike network. The biggest were coated in a ribbed, leathery surface and as thick as a wrist, snaking like tree roots across the asphalt. Finer tributaries as thick as fingers spun away from them, eventually splaying out into hair-thin dark lines.
Leon slowly pushed open the door, then stepped back and reached for the right-hand door, easing it open as quietly as he could, careful that his feet didn’t step on any of the virus’s fine-ended network.
As he eased open the second door, he heard a soft, wet, snapping sound above him. He looked up to see a finger-thick vein dangling from the concrete ab
ove, leaking a string of gooey brown liquid.
“Shit!” Leon hissed.
It had grown across the corner of the right-hand door and looked to Leon almost intentional. He was pretty sure the broken vein was there as an alarm. They were going to have to move fast.
For a second, he was uncertain what to do—go for the plan or abandon it.
Someone was going to step on a trip wire sooner or later. You have to go. Now!
He turned back to them—“Go! Go! Go!”—then hurried to the cage Cora had been holding up for him. He ducked under the frame, and she lowered it down quickly, the luggage wheels bouncing and rattling noisily on the ground. Jake and Adewale rolled out into the open first, the cage ringing like an empty shopping cart pushed across a cobbled street as their wheels encountered the first ribs of viral growth. The rest followed them out, Leon and Cora last in the convoy.
“Right! Go right!” Leon shouted to Cora over the deafening rattle of their wheels.
“Yes, yes, I know!”
He looked down at his feet just as one of his sneakers stepped on a zigzagging vein. It squished like a slug, spurting dark goo out through its ruptured hide. Even this small spatter of liquid seemed to have some sort of rudimentary intelligence, as the liquid appeared to draw back under its own momentum, toward the flattened skin, to escape the blinding daylight.
Even a single droplet of this stuff can think for itself! The thought hit him hard. Consideration would have to come later because already it seemed news of their escape had traveled the meandering highways and byways. Ahead of them lay the red truck parked up beside the wide entrance to the warehouse marked “Pinner Distribution.” From fifty yards away, it looked as though the straight edges of the entrance to the dark interior were being dissolved away before their eyes. It reminded him of ink being dropped onto blotting paper—blossoming, spreading.
He realized then what he was seeing: a swarm, surging from the inside of the building, over the edges and out on to the walls. He suspected his first act as project manager was going to get them all killed.
Leon could see Jake and Adewale up ahead, steering their cage diagonally to the left, giving the truck, and the warehouse entrance beside it, as wide a berth as possible. The creatures were swarming out of the gloomy interior like enraged killer bees from a kicked hive. They surged down the walls, across the asphalt, around and under the red truck.
