by Frank Tayell
“Next holiday, I’m going somewhere in the tropics,” Chester said. “But for now, I’ll go with you. We’ll manage the job in half the time, so that’ll halve the chance we freeze to death. And we’ve still got the Marines on the boat if we need backup. No arguments, mate. Let’s get this done before good sense returns.”
“Rule one is never volunteer,” Petrelli said, “but are you sure about this?”
“Nope,” Sholto said, as he finished emptying his pockets. He pushed his way outside, onto the deck, paused by the rail, then half-jumped, half-lowered himself into the water. As it reached his chest, he turned and began wading towards the shore.
Ignoring the cautioning clamour of his better instincts, Chester swung himself over the side. When the water reached level with his heart, it almost stopped. The sea felt as cold as deep snow, and just as unforgiving. His feet touched ground, and then felt it shift. Beneath him were treacherous stones rather than any firmer footing. Sholto slipped. Chester reached out, grabbing the older man’s arm, hauling him up and onward, slipping himself in the process. Holding each other up, they waded on towards drier, if not warmer, ground. But one of the zombies was dragging itself towards them. When the water was only up to his numb waist, Chester let go of Sholto, unclipped his mace, and bellowed a roar of frozen fury.
The zombie, indifferent, staggered on, arms raised. But indifference didn’t bring balance. The creature slipped on the frozen rocks, sprawling to its back with a crack of breaking bone. The zombie was indifferent to that, too. It rolled and squirmed as Chester stumbled towards it, dripping his way out of the shallows. His feet failed to find purchase on a submerged patch of seaweed, and he slipped. His knees and left hand stopped his fall, and the jolting pain cleared the icy fog. In a surging scrabble, the zombie dragged itself closer. Chester pushed himself up and on, swinging the mace around and into the zombie’s skull, splattering bone and brain across the icy stones.
“All right?” Sholto asked, now ashore, angling towards the rear of the ship. The formerly crouching zombie had stood and half turned towards them.
“Fine enough,” Chester said, shivering. The searchlight flickered across the ship, before returning to the still barely standing zombie. Sholto raised his hatchet and slammed it down on the creature’s forehead. It dropped, and Sholto stepped back, lowering his axe. He reached into his pocket, held something up, then threw it aside.
“Do you have a flashlight?” Sholto called. “Mine’s dead.”
Chester reached to his breast pocket and took out the small torch. Designed for a bike helmet, it had a weak beam, but was labelled as waterproof. He’d wrapped it in plastic anyway. By its glow, and the bouncing reflection of the searchlight’s glare, he saw what had caused Sholto to pause. There were other zombies, but they were dead.
“Is that a harpoon?” Chester said. “That’s not just a spear. That’s a genuine harpoon.” The metal dart had speared through the skull of one zombie and straight into the chest of the creature it was lying on top of. A screwdriver was embedded, hilt deep, in that second zombie’s eye-socket. Chester trained his torch upward, following the harpoon’s wire to where it disappeared behind the boat’s gunwales, just above where the name was painted.
“Frobisher,” Chester said. “We’ve found our ship. Dunno about you, but I’m beyond brass monkeys and sinking towards gold gorillas. If you keep watch, I’ll check aboard. Two minutes, then back to the launch?”
“Yep,” Sholto said, walking a few paces along the shore, more to keep warm than to watch for the undead.
“Should have brought a camera,” Chester muttered as he made his way towards the ladder embedded at the ship’s stern. The vessel had been driven onto land prow-first, and was only listing by twenty degrees. It wasn’t a big ship, though it seemed massive up close, about three times the size of the pleasure-cruiser-turned-launch that they’d used to come ashore. A military ship? No, what navy painted their ships red and white?
As he reached the deck, he decided it was coast guard. Canadian coast guard, judging by the maple-leaf flag painted at the top of the ladder. The deck was as weather-battered as the hull, slippery with ice, but he didn’t put away his mace. Already feeling his hands going numb, he made a beeline for the steep steps leading up to the cockpit-bridge.
It wasn’t empty. A corpse was slumped in the captain’s chair; both arms hung over the side in accordance with gravity, drawing a plumb-line toward the centre of the earth. He couldn’t see the figure’s face, just the hair; long, dark, but with a hint of pink at the tips. Her clothing was that of a sailor, bright orange rain-proof overalls, the jacket of which was on the deck, beneath her arms. On the right of which was a sodden bandage, stained brown with blood and worse.
“There’s more bodies!” Sholto called from below.
Chester jumped.
The corpse stirred.
“Of course you’re undead,” Chester muttered, half-raising the mace. There wasn’t the height to swing it, and he couldn’t draw his knife without first dropping either mace or torch. He drew his arm back, ready to punch the mace forward into that matted, salt-spray-encrusted skull.
“Sorry,” the woman whispered.
“Are you alive?” Chester stepped forward, dropping the mace, reaching out, checking her skin. It was cold, but not with the chill of the grave. “You’re alive. Thaddeus, I’ve got a live one! She’s alive!”
Chapter 17 - Eldorado
Port-Aux-Basques, Newfoundland
A warm shower and a change of clothes later, and Chester had begun to defrost. Jay was waiting for him in the corridor outside their cabin.
“So?” the young man asked.
“So what?” Chester said, walking towards the stairs that led to the mess deck.
“So what did you find on that ship?” Jay asked.
“I told you when we came aboard,” Chester said. “And I gave you the charts and maps. More importantly, why isn’t this ship docked at the harbour?”
“Oh, the waves were too high,” Jay said. “The chief says we’ve got to wait. And he’s got the charts now.”
“Let me guess, he told you to stop bothering him?”
“Yeah, but those weren’t the words he used,” Jay said. “You really found nothing else on the boat?”
“Finding a survivor isn’t nothing,” Chester said.
“You know what I mean,” Jay said.
“How is she?”
“Dr Harabi is still examining her. They’ve got the admiral on the phone telling her what to do.”
“That sounds serious.”
“I guess. Mum told me to get out of the med-bay. She wasn’t much politer than the chief.”
Chester paused at the stairs.
“What?” Jay asked.
“No, I’m just weighing my options. I think they’re hot beans, hot spinach, or hot water.”
“The heater on the bridge is broken,” Jay said.
“It is?”
“The chief can’t fix it until the storm stops.”
“Beans it is,” Chester said, and began climbing down.
“You must have found something on that ship,” Jay said, his feet clanging heavily on the metal stairs as he followed.
“A few shotgun shells, but no shotgun,” Chester said. “No food. No water. No power except to the battery for the emergency radio. We didn’t look for long because we were only looking for a way to get her back to the launch.”
“That stretcher?” Jay said. “It’s almost like a raft. It’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah, with flotation devices on the side. That it wasn’t used anytime since February tells us something, I suppose. We’ll learn more when we go back to the Frobisher. Or when we go ashore in the harbour proper. Or when the patient wakes.”
“Diana Fenton,” Jay said. “That was the name on the beacon.”
“Might not be her,” Chester said. “Time will tell.”
The mess hall was nearly as cold as the corridor outside. Chester
gathered a bowl, and hovered near the galley, enjoying the heat seeping through the serving hatch. Dr Harabi was missing, as were the chief and his engineers, Nilda, and Norm Jennings. Sholto was there, in dry clothes but still-wet hair, surrounded by the Marines. On the table in front of them, reclaimed from the chief, were most of the charts. It was the annotated notes on those that kept everyone’s interest until, finally, Nilda entered.
“She’s still alive,” Nilda said. “If we’d arrived a week later, she’d be dead. If she survives until dark, she’ll probably be alive at dawn, but it’ll be touch and go for a few days at least.”
“Did she say anything?” Jay asked.
“Nothing coherent,” Nilda said. “If she survives the night, Dr Harabi will operate on her arm. We’ll need blood donors. We need anaesthetic and antibiotics, but we might as well wish for sunshine since we’re more likely to get it. Did you find anything on those charts?”
“She was looking for diesel,” Sholto said. “It’s written on the back of this chart, plain as day. We need diesel. There’s a few places listed. Most I don’t recognise, but they’re all crossed through except Port-Aux-Basques.”
“There’s no mention of St John’s, Port au Port, or… what was that other place the ferry went to?”
“Argentia? No, it’s not on the list,” Sholto said. “There’s a couple of places in Maine crossed through. I can’t tell you whether she set out from there, or visited them.”
“Or whether there’s diesel here,” Nilda said. “But I bet we can guess why she thought there might be: because of the ferry.”
“The plan, then, is to stay here until she’s recovered?” Sholto asked.
“Until after the operation,” Nilda said. “The procedure will be difficult as it is, but far worse if the ship is at sea.”
“Then I’m going ashore,” Sholto said.
“Now?” Nilda asked.
“It’s barely lunchtime,” Sholto said.
“It’s a raging storm,” Nilda said. “And there are zombies out there.”
“There are always zombies,” Sholto said. He looked around the small group. “We’ve been travelling a long time. Fighting a long time. Some of us longer than others. We’ve been looking for a home, and for some of us, we’ve ended up back close to where we began. Maybe there’s fuel here, maybe there’s not. Newfoundland is further south than Faroe, so maybe it can be a new home for us. Or maybe it’s a zombie-ridden wasteland like everywhere else. But even if it is, maybe this is as far as we go. We’ve got to stop searching for Eldorado. No one ever finds it.”
By the time The New World had shouldered its way to within a searchlight’s distant reach of shore, there was a long queue for the launch.
“Does everyone want to go ashore?” Nilda asked. “Well, the more the merrier, I suppose. And the more there are, the quicker we’ll finish.”
They stood in the lee of the shallow canopy next to the winch. Chester peered at the shore, waiting for his turn to board. “Are my eyes wrong? That looks like a bridge to nowhere,” he said.
“That’s the ramp for driving vehicles onto the ferry,” Nilda said. “That’s what the chief says. These seas are too treacherous for a Ro-Ro ferry.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Chester said. “Are you sure you want to go ashore?”
“Are you?” she replied. “You’re barely dry from your soaking.”
“No, I’m with you, now and always. If you think this is what we need to do, then we will.”
“Meaning you don’t?” she asked.
“Meaning I reckon the day’s going to end with us fighting zombies in the freezing rain.”
After a half hour, and a failed attempt to dock beneath the ferry’s on-ramp, they managed to secure the launch to the seawall, some fifty metres north. The launch banged into the tyres chained to the concrete as, one by one, they climbed ashore.
“You can’t call this ground dry,” Nilda said. “Oh, I wish it would stop swaying. Let’s get under that on-ramp. It looks drier.”
It was, but only marginally.
“Norm, stay here,” Nilda said. “Watch the boat, and watch for us to come running. If that survivor was looking for diesel, so should we.”
“I might take a walk inland,” Sholto said.
“When you say a walk, how far do you mean?” Nilda asked.
“The fuel tanks won’t be here,” Sholto said, waving his hand at the cluster of cabins and temporary shelters that had clearly become permanent fixtures. “I’ll go inland, see what there is to see.”
“I’ll go with him,” Chester said. “And we won’t go beyond the sound of a gunshot. One shot means there’s more danger than the two of us can face, so everyone back to the launch. More than one, that’s when you start worrying.”
“That’s not funny, Chester,” Nilda said. “Fine, go. Not you, Jay. I need someone to lean on until I remember how to walk on dry land.”
Chester unclipped his mace, undid the button on his holster, then checked his torch was on his belt and his plastic-wrapped spare was in his pocket. “Ready when you are, mate.”
Sholto nodded, and, rifle in two hands, led the way.
The ferry-ramp offered some shelter from the rain, though none from the wind. But it had also shielded the access road beneath from the worst of the wind-borne debris. There was a clear, if occasionally flooded, path leading inland. A path frequently bordered by dark and forbidding buildings. Windows had been broken. Doors had been forced, and many now banged open and shut in time with the gale. With every creaking slam, Chester swung left and right, searching for movement, expecting the undead. They found them thirty yards further inland.
As the ramp neared the ground, the access road branched to the east, towards a distant treeless expanse. Far nearer, visible even in the stormy day’s night-time gloom, was a battered yellow forklift. Around it were the undead. At least eight. Some standing. Some squatting. Sholto tracked his rifle left then right, waiting for a target to move. None did. Slowly, weapons raised, they walked the last few dozen yards to the forklift.
“What are you waiting for?” Chester said, talking to himself as much as the undead. The nearest zombie was leaning against the forklift’s cab. Chester raised his mace, but instead of swinging, he prodded the creature’s shoulder. It didn’t move. He pushed harder. The creature fell, splashing into the brackish mud. Still, it didn’t move. It didn’t thrash. It didn’t squirm, bite, snap, or twitch.
“Let me try that,” Sholto yelled over the rising storm. He kicked a one-armed zombie sprawled on the engine block. The zombie slid down the forklift, into the gutter. And there it stayed.
“They’re dead,” Chester muttered. “State the obvious and all that, but they’re dead.”
“What was that?” Sholto yelled.
“Never mind,” Chester said. He fished out his torch and shone it on a peeling-face, then on the next creature’s hairless scalp. “I can’t see a wound.”
Sholto said nothing, but motioned they should go on.
Chester hesitated. Part of him wanted to finish these creatures, to make them safe, to make sure they weren’t leaving danger at their backs. But that was fear talking, the cumulative effect of a year of impossible horror. He followed Sholto around the forklift.
Ahead, the access road, and the on-ramp, both angled towards a treeless expanse that had to be a car park. A momentary break in the clouds allowed the sun to struggle through, revealing three shadowy silhouettes he’d never seen before the outbreak, but come across far too often since. Armoured cars, though these three had been designed with as much emphasis on the car as the armour. Four wheels apiece, with a gun-mount on top, they seemed to have been parked in a dip.
Why was there a dip in a car park? Of course there wasn’t. The armoured cars were ringed by something. Litter? Mud? Debris? No. Corpses.
“Looks like a battle was fought here,” Chester said, fishing out his torch again.
“It wasn’t a battle,” Sholto said as
Chester’s light moved from one corpse to the next. “The heads. Shine that light on their heads.”
“They’re dead?” Chester said. “They are, right?”
“If they weren’t, this storm would have woken them,” Sholto said. “I think they really are. They really are all dead.”
Chapter 18 - Santa’s Grotto
Port-Aux-Basques, Newfoundland
“But that zombie you killed by the coastguard ship wasn’t dead,” Nilda said. While the chief searched for the pipeline for refuelling a docked ferry, she’d been searching the offices for charts. It was in one of those prefab cabins that Chester and Sholto had found her.
“How many zombies did you count?” Jay asked.
“Well north of fifty in that parking lot,” Sholto said.
“And how many did you see back in Savage Cove?” Nilda asked.
“That’s just it,” Sholto said. “Only one that moved, and that was in a house, near an obviously killed zombie. I didn’t check the creatures by the crashed truck because there was a field of snow between us. I just assumed. And by the Frobisher, only one creature advanced towards us. In the time it took us to get ashore and close enough to kill it, a second had only managed to turn around. What you saw in Denmark, what Kim saw in Dundalk, what we’ve all hoped we saw in England, Wales, Ireland, and France, is actually happening. It has happened here. As cold as it is, you can’t say that those zombies out there are frozen. They weren’t killed. They’re just dead.”
“Except that zombie by the ship proves you wrong,” Nilda said. “As do those on that freighter.”
“Only partially,” Jay said.
“You don’t get partial credit in life,” Nilda said. “Certainly not in life and death.”
“How long will it take to find the fuel?” Sholto asked.
“I don’t know,” Nilda said. “The chief still hasn’t found the pipes, but I guess, if they lead anywhere, it’ll be beyond that car park. I suppose another hour.”
